Roland Cherry is lucky to be alive after he was attacked by a hippo while on a canoe trip in Africa and “thrown through the air like a ragdoll.”
Cherry, 63, was on a five-week vacation in southern Africa in June with his wife, Shirley, when they embarked on a group guided safari along the Kafue River in Zambia.
As they paddled, their canoe glided into a hippo, which lifted the boat out of the water with its body.
“When the hippo first hit the canoe, there was a massive crash, much like a car crash really,” Cherry, an experienced canoeist from Warwickshire, England, told the BBC.
The craft “reared up in the air,” throwing the couple into the river.
Shirley was able to swim to the safety of the riverbank, but her husband suffered a dislocated shoulder as the canoe capsized and couldn’t get out of the river.
“The instructions were to swim to safety but I couldn’t swim so I was really a sitting duck, trying to swim with one arm, which was never going to end well — and then it grabbed me,” he said.
Ronald and Shirley Cherry pose for a photo in Africa, before the hippo attack.
Shirley Cherry / Facebook
Firmly in the hippo’s jaws, Cherry said he was dragged to the bottom of the river, thinking, “Oh no, what a way to go… I’m going to die.”
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“At the bottom, it then fortunately released me and my lifejacket helped lift me back to the surface. I counted to 10, realizing that the river was quite deep at that point,” he described in a recounting of the attack on a fundraising website.
“At the surface I took a gulp of air but then the hippo grabbed me again and tossed me like a ragdoll, fortunately towards the riverbank where I was able to do a bum-shuffle back to the edge.”
As he sat on shore, while those around him scrambled to get him help, he did a quick survey of his body and realized he was terribly hurt.
The hippo had badly mauled him, leaving deep bites in both of his legs and one of his upper arms. He also had his dislocated shoulder to contend with.
“I remember looking down at my legs thinking ‘that’s not good.’ There was bits of flesh sticking out of my torn shorts and blood over my abdomen,” he told the BBC of the damage.
Roland Cherry is transported on a stretcher after he was attacked by a hippo.
Roland Cherry / Just Giving
“I was in its jaws and I didn’t see it once — we have eyewitness accounts of that happening — but I was never conscious of that.”
The air ambulance that was supposed to take Cherry to a large hospital wasn’t there when they arrived at a nearby village, so he was taken to the local Mtendre Mission General Hospital, “a decision which undoubtedly saved my life,” he wrote.
Doctors quickly assessed the damage and got to work cleaning and closing his wounds before sepsis could set in. He was then taken to Milpark hospital in Johannesburg, where he underwent an additional six operations.
Now, in the hopes of giving back to the community that he credits for his survival, the Cherrys are raising funds to help buy medical equipment for the Mtendre Mission hospital.
Roland Cherry recovers in hospital following the hippo attack.
Shirley Cherry / Facebook
“While recovering in my hospital bed, I had time to think and reflect on the incident,” he wrote. “What struck me most from this near-death experience was the kindness of strangers.”
As of Thursday morning, the Cherrys are nearing 90 per cent of their $31,600 fundraising goal.
Cherry told The Times that he continues to recover at home and recently learned the hippo that attacked him was protecting her calf.
“We were there to see the natural world and we wanted to see, but I didn’t want to see that close up,” he said, per The Times. “I certainly don’t hate hippos — I’m not very fond of what one did to me.”
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